e is a mathematical constant roughly equal to 2.71828182846. π is another, roughly equal to 3.14159265359. Both are transcendental numbers.

The first panel discusses eπ − π, which is around 19.999099979 — very close to 20. Black Hat explains how he tricked a programming team into believing that eπ − π really equals 20 - instead of just being weirdly close - thus that any noticeable deviation from 20 results from errors in the code. This made them waste a lot of time trying to find a nonexistent bug until they realized that Black Hat was lying (clearly they had not known him for very long).

Floating point numbers are how computers store non-integer real numbers as decimals — or rather, in most cases, approximate them: infinite amounts of data would be required to represent most numbers in decimal form (exceptions are whole numbers and terminating decimals). The "floating-point handlers" would be the code performing the eπ − π calculation.

The mysterious almost-equation is believed to be a mathematical coincidence, or a numerical relationship that "just happens" with no satisfactory explanation. It can be rearranged to (π + 20)i ≈ −1, so cos(ln(π + 20)) ≈ −1. Piling on a few more cosines gives cos(π cos(π cos(ln(π + 20)))) ≈ −1, which is off by less than 10−35!

The title text pokes fun at another coincidence: ∜(9² + 19²/22) ≈ 3.1415926525, close to π (deviating only in the 9th decimal place). The humor comes from the fact that π is transcendental. Transcendental numbers are numbers that cannot be expressed through basic arithmetic with integers; one cannot end up with the exact value for any transcendental number (including π) by adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, exponentiating, and/or taking the nth root of any rational number, meaning the title text cannot possibly be true.

Discussion

Asserting that the programmers' algorithms truncated to three decimal digits is an unsupported and unnecessary extrapolation. Most floating-point implementations use binary, not decimal, and 19.999099979 looks very much like a rounding error in binary floating-point that has accumulated over several operations. Daddy (talk) 12:39, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

The third bullet-point above needs changing... (9^2+(19^2/22))=97.4090909091 which is close to pi to the fourth power, so it should be (as noted in the text) (9^2+(19^2/22))^1/4 Squirreltape (talk) 19:27, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

Actually, in-case you didn't notice, it says "∜(9² + 19²/22)", not just the sum on its own. I checked the sum on my calculator, and it is equal to what the page is saying. "∜(9² + 19²/22)" means "4th root of (9^2+19^2/22)" (What the title text is saying), or on Windows Calculator, "(9^2+19^2/22) yroot(4)" (Basically what the sum is saying). So, the 3rd bullet point is correct. --Katavschi (talk) 22:48, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

The ACM competitions are famous for being under tight time pressure. Making your own team waste time would absolutely get you kicked out (and make enemies) Mountain Hikes (talk) 04:40, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

"If they thought about the mathematics"

hm, are you saying it is obvious that e^ pi - pi is not 20? How would you know without approximating it? The sum of two irrationals is not necessarily irrational. 162.158.34.194 01:58, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

approximate e^pi using slightly bigger numbers than e and pi (say e: 2.7183 and pi: 3.1416) and subtract a value that is slightly smaller than pi (say 3.1415). The result is less than 20 and a upper limit for e^pi - pi 141.101.93.49 19:59, 22 August 2016 (UTC)